Skepticism

EVENTS

Presenting the most festive holiday image possible

We’re not much for the Big Winter Holidays at our place, for a few reasons: the atheism thing, revulsion at enforced mass consumption, Seasonal Affective Disorder. For myself there’s also the fact that my birthday follows close on the heels of the New Year, and though that used to be a jolly opportunity for reflection on the accomplishments of the previous year, the process gets old when you’ve gone through it 50 times or more.

But we are seeing some friends in the coming week, and getting outside to enjoy the gorgeous winter light in the Mojave, and taking advantage of the slight slowdown in our work schedules to enjoy life a little bit. Also there’s the Doctor Who special. One cannot understate the importance of the Doctor Who special.

Regardless of how you experience the next few days, with joy and hilarity or with clenched teeth or by not caring much at all either way, I hope your December 25 is every bit as happy as any of the other 365 days we’re scheduled to have had this year. And in that spirit I offer you the best holiday image ever.

Comments

I always gotta get the lights up or I’ll go mad. I want to do something in the dark, and so lights are my thing. I put 900 lights on my mom’s tree and she put 900 more; I put lights all around our roof and then another along my mother’s roof; I put lights all around the main windows in the sun room and we ordered and bought more lights to install permanently.

And I put up colored lights on every holiday I can. I have so many different lights. Lightslightslights. @-@

We used to live in a country town that had 75% of the houses and gardens covered in coloured lights, back in the late 80’s. It went from a nice community tradition attracting a steady stream of visitors to a sponsored tourist attraction causing gridlock for 3 weeks of evenings, with street vendors and rolling nativity re-enactments. It did my head in for coloured lights decorations for ever. After we moved I just couldn’t face it again. I have a couple of 100ft long strings of white LED downlights though, I stretch them through the trees at other peoples parties when requested. Great for wandering about the gardens late in the evening.

YES! The Doctor Who Christmas Special is absolutely essential, and its importance cannot be understated. Why can’t I convince people that this is indeed the reason for the season? (Well, aside from axial tilt?)

I must say I’m impressed by how many people, particularly in the atheist/skeptical community, are into Doctor Who these days. I’ve been a fan since ’76, and can argue that I was probably the best in Doctor Who trivia in Canada back in the late 80’s (I won the trivia contest at a Toronto convention that Jon Pertwee – still my favorite Doctor – attended, and generally doubled the score of the second place winner in some lesser contests before that). Perhaps we need to make it an event at skeptic conventions?

This, in my ever so humble opinion, is the secret to making this much repurposed holiday work: invent, adapt, and attach your own traditions to it. Just as have so many, through history…

Yestereve, for example, apparently I tweeted the following, at one couplet per tweet, somewhere right around midnight:

Midnight after wrapping; the rest of the mob
Passed out hours earlier, making the job
Of doing the Santa stuff fairly unhurried
For this I was grateful; I always get worried
They’ll find me at sunup face down in a heap
Of things left unwrapped, as I’d fallen asleep
But now the stockings are flat on the floor stuffed with stuff
And I’m throwing back Bushmills ’til I’ve had enough.

… and I believe, going forward, I may just have to make a tradition of this, too: AJ’s Yuletide Twitter poem…

I figure it can be a bit like the queen’s address. Only mine will rhyme…

Beat that, Windsor, you old anachronism, you*!

Anyway: merry endlessly repurposed midwinter celebration all.

(/*She will, of course… And probably up the ante by bringing in some DJs to scratch over a hip hop beat… Always been so damned competitive, that woman.)

Yes, Dr. Who makes the day so enjoyable.
We’re watching the Dr. Who marathon – one Christmas special after another – to get into the mood to watch the new one when it comes on.
And I’ve got a mincemeat pie in the oven!

Every year, when I start feeling down around the holidays, I watch funny movies. this year’s recommendation : Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein. A brilliant parody of the 30s horror movies, with what was possibly the best pair of burlesque comics of their day.